Mr Boogs does all the food shopping and cooking. I do the laundry, cleaning and washing up.
It works well for us and we both take our ‘jobs’ very seriously!
Mr Boogs being extremely foody and me having my Mum’s determination to be clean and tidy. I have to be - as my ADHD works against this instinct all the time. 🙂
I clean the loos, most of the washing and all the ironing. Husband does the vacuuming and general keeping tidy.
We have quite a minimalist house so it is easy to keep tidy. Lots of books though. Anyone who thinks books make a house look untidy is wrong!
We had a bit of a sexist division of labour when we were younger. I did inside jobs and Cheery husband did outside jobs. He has very bad ankles now and can't stand for long periods. He made soup at the weekend, sitting on one of the kitchen stools and I went outside to weed. He also has a stool in the garage for jobs done out there. A bit of the pressure of outside work has been taken up by Cheery son who mows the lawns for us and as I love being in the garden it's not a chore for me to work there.
We found our system wasn't really working as I was home more than husband and he often comes home one or two hours late from work, which makes him tired at weekends. We had to modify our thinking and find a different system
I did get all of last night’s and today’s dirty dishes into the dishwasher and they’re being washed now! I’ve been bad at this for a while now and after the bears helped with stuff Saturday, I want to keep up with the dishes every day.
I did get all of last night’s and today’s dirty dishes into the dishwasher and they’re being washed now! I’ve been bad at this for a while now and after the bears helped with stuff Saturday, I want to keep up with the dishes every day.
Yes, I like coming down to a clear sink. I’ve made it part of my routine now and, like cleaning my teeth, I can’t not do it.
I have a dishwasher (came fitted with the house) but have never used it - I prefer to wash them by hand. When you cook as little as I do, it is no chore!
There is clutter to clear though - having had some temporary accommodation while working away, I have accumulation from two places to manage. Everything looks orderly for now, as long as I don’t open the Cupboards of Doom.
I am particularly ashamed of how many clothes I am sure I will not wear anymore - although at least those are easy to dispose of. But what to do with things like non-functional lamps (and other dead electricals) and a plague of tupperware and other vessels? That is not exactly clear.
Once you use a dishwasher you realise how better it is at actually washing sturff especially greasy pots & glassware. Same goes for clothes washers.
I used to make a virtue out of the washing-up; not any more. 4 months of doing without in late 2023 taught me otherwise! New machine installed just before Xmas which made life bearable….
I run mine every other day. Each time there are between 50 and 70 items. That’s a lot of time at the sink (though I still have to hand wash pots and pans and anything with wood).
I used to run my dishwasher every day but since I have been on my own, and bought an air fryer, I don’t generate as many items. I find myself washing up a small saucepan which I want to use most days, and end up washing everything else by hand too.
Same here Piglet. Now that I'm on my own I only need to run the (small) dishwasher every 2-3 days, but I wouldn't be without it! And yes I do put pots and pans in....and wooden spoons actually! Only thing I would always handwash is antique china and 'posh' glassware....not everyday glasses but anything with a crystal finish or metallic rim etc.
I use the dishwasher for china and everyday glass. Copper saucepans don't do well in a machine so they are washed by hand. Cast iron skillet is never washed, just wiped out and re-oiled. "Best" china is always hand-washed - it is very old and the gilding would come off.
I remember right after we settled into our first house. Mrs Gramps thought we did not need a dishwasher. I persisted and we bought a portable dishwasher. 44 years later, we never looked back. As pointed out, there are some items that still need to be hand washed. But dishwashers have saved a lot of time, a lot of water, maybe even our relationship.
Dishwashers are wonderful - they are, in effect, the cupboard you put your dirty dishes in so it looks like you've done the washing up. The added bonus being that running it means you have!
I am just back from a week away with Nenlet1 and her little family. She is super-organised and has a very tidy house, particularly the cupboards and drawers. She was telling me she folds clothes Marie Condo style (and gave me a lesson in that) so that you can always see everything in a drawer or on a shelf, and the key to things on shelves is large baskets so that, again, you can pull them out and see everything. I'm planning to purchase some when I'm out today and make a start!
I've informed Mr Nen that this change to our lives is coming ! I am, in fact, far from being the chief offender at Casa Nen when it comes to keeping clothes and other stuff. Mr Nen keeps vowing he's going to have "a sort out" but never quite gets round to it.
While my house is not, and has never been, as tidy as I would like it to be, everything is relative. I have been to people's houses that are so immaculate I'm scared to move and I truly wouldn't like my home to be like that.
Downstairs is still tidy from last week so I have invited a friend round this morning.
I am not starting any more sorting and clearing for a couple of weeks.
I remember turning down lovely room to rent in lovely Georgian house - because it was all so lovely, and I couldn’t see my scruffy belongings fitting in.
Mrs RR loves her dishwasher. I myself never use it as I tend to get a lot of praying done whilst washing up!
Fortunately we are both chronically untidy .... but clean ... ish. Mrs RR insists we change the bedding at least monthly whether it needs it or not. In order to do this the cats have to be prised off.
Just thought I’d mention that I wasn’t throwing shade at dishwasher users! Glad they are helpful for you.
I just like to wash dishes by hand (i) as a mindful break (so a bit similar to you, @RockyRoger ), looking from the kitchen window over the garden and the birds, and (ii) because when I’ve had really low mood, washing up a mug or something like that seems to be one of the small tasks I can do to get out of torpor.
Also, there is just me, so no one to argue with about the dishes
I have made a start on the Cupboards of Doom! I picked the easiest starting point - the bathroom. About a shopping bag full of redundant / expired bottles of this and that! I can’t remember why I must have thought, ages ago, that I needed hair conditioner - I have a crop!
Fortunately we are both chronically untidy .... but clean ... ish.
It seems to me that if you're both at the same level of tidy/untidy, domestic harmony ensues. If you have different ideas and expectations (as with many other things when you share a home ) it can be challenging. I've probably said before that Mr Nen is an only child and grew up in a good-sized house where he could have his own bedroom plus a study, and with a large kitchen/diner/sitting-area-by-the-Aga downstairs where his parents spent their time the separate lounge was his as well. He never had to throw anything away. I, meanwhile, grew up in a small house with five of us in it when I was small and four of us in it once my elder brother came home for good when I was a teenager. Also, my mum was a minimalist. (They took a daily paper and if it was left lying around too late in the day it was out in the newspaper pile in the garage. Here, our Sunday paper hangs around the lounge all week and I'm not the one who reads it :rolleyes: .)
I purchased some baskets today, so Marie Condo folding and new methods of storage will commence tomorrow. Watch this space for updates .
I really enjoyed watching Marie Kondo, though I believe she's more relaxed since having children. I started folding stuff and putting into smaller containers in drawers. Family smiled at this, but no one has complained about the containers I put into their drawers to keep stuff sorted, and I have found that method very happy.
When my parents bought a new dishwasher and our son was a baby they passed their old one onto us. It was a lifesaver, particularly when I returned to work. However, it really came into it's own when son was ill, it helped us to keep up with keeping stuff clean. The gifted one broke not long eventually and I used my government benefit to buy a new one. I came home after one hospital stay to 10 days of washing and washing up as husband was doing the other child stuff, working and visiting us in hospital. Without a dishwasher we would never have kept the show on the road.
The other sovereign preservative of a marriage, imo, is a king-sized bed.
Or, even better, two king sized beds in separate bedrooms.
Having said that, the NE Man has a king sized bed whereas I have a single. But my single means I can have a lot of bookshelves whereas he has only one book case in his bedroom.
I doubt whether I could ever sleep comfortably in a single bed. Last time was chez late MIL some years back when I slept in her spare room after escorting her to & from cataract surgery. Woke on bedroom floor after rolling out of bed. Not a pleasant experience.
I too feel deeply insecure in a single bed. Even in a double there's a clinging to a life-raft feeling if you're sharing it. My ideal is 2 kings run together.
When Mrs Gramps and I got married, kings were just coming out. We knew we would be moving a lot so we were not sure we would always have room for a king. We settled for a queen. I think that was the biggest mistake in our married life.
A few years ago, the queen broke down. Turms out we bought another queen because all our bed clothes fit a queen. The second biggest mistake in our married life.
Our second house came with a small dishwasher, and once I'd had one, I never wanted to be without it.
Heh! When Mrs C and I moved to the US, I was bemused that our rental apartment had a tiny kitchen with about two postage stamps' worth of counter space, but had a dishwasher. I couldn't see how you could use enough dishes in that tiny kitchen to make it worth running the dishwasher. And so for basically the whole of the year that we lived in that apartment, I ignored the dishwasher and did the washing up by hand.
These days, we run our dishwasher between 2 and 3 times per day.
I have a queen size bed. But then again there is only me, and I find the bed is indeed a good size for one queen.
The only places in recent years I have encountered a single bed is either at summer conferences where they use college student accommodation (😱) or at retreat centres. Not sure whether the latter arrangements are intended to avoid scandalous liaisons among retreatants, although you would think that unlikely anyway…
I can cope with single beds, but single duvets seem to fall off during the night (I think I am a very mobile sleeper)
Different places have different scales. I know my 160 cm bed is a queen in the US (5' 4"), but it's bigger than a UK king, which I think is 150 cm (5'). It also takes up rather too much of the bedroom, but I wouldn't be without it.
I really like my single. I could migrate to my husband's king-sized when he is working away from home, but I don't.
We are currently in a hotel. It's a lovely room, with two 5ft wide beds, but with limited wardrobe space. The NE Man has claimed the bulk of the space on the basis that I need less because my packing is neater. (I have my underwear, PJs, and t-shirts in three separate packing cubes.)
I am not convinced that tidy, organised packing means that I get less than half of the available storage space! But I am highly impressed with the NE Man's ability to raise untidy packing to political ideology - from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. He being the low ability, high need side of the suitcase packing equation.
Mr Nen and I have a king-sized bed and it's excellent. When he's away I enjoy being able to take up the whole of it, by star fishing and by shimmying over from warm side to cool side and back again on a hot night.
We have different views on duvet thickness; Mr Nen is one who will change the duvet several times a year depending on the temperature and nowadays he feels the cold more than I do. I, being of A Certain Age, tend to be hot in bed (and not in a good way ) so left to my own devices I would probably have the summer thickness duvet on all year, sticking various limbs out from under it on a very hot night and adding a blanket over the top on a cold one. We have tried the two duvets thing and having a gap between us in the covers didn't work for us.
Ah, packing cubes! Something else I've come across and that Nenlet1 was extolling the virtues of when we were away with her and her little family last week. You simply take them out of your case and transfer them to the shelves or drawers in your accommodation, have an empty one for dirty laundry, and transfer them all back into the case for going home. Mr Nen is Packer In Charge in our house. I remember how put out I was the first time we went away together with our stuff in one case: I put my things in and he promptly took them all out again . Currently I don't presume to put even as much as a pair of my socks into the case - I have to leave everything out on the bed for him to pack . However, as Nenlet1 pointed out, I could employ the packing cubes - "My things are all in these" - and he can pack his things however he wants to. Particularly with the Marie Condo method of folding, which makes much better use of space than any folding method I've employed hitherto.
On that subject, I had a happy afternoon of folding yesterday and discovered how much space can be created when it's done the Marie Condo way. I now have all the things on my shelf of the wardrobe (there are six shelves; the other five belong to Mr Nen) folded into two baskets, I've reorganised one of my dressing table drawers and sorted Mr Nen's t-shirt drawer, which now has space in it for more. He hasn't noticed yet so I presume he hasn't put a clean t-shirt on today .
I have watched a couple of Yt videos of the Marie Condo method of folding, which starts in a similar way to my normal folding, in thirds down the length. I then just fold in half across, or thirds depending on length, to fit in the drawer space I have.
What Marie Condo does which, for some reason, goes right against the grain with me is start with the garment face up and folding the outer thirds over the front.
I have to start with the front down on the table and fold into thirds along the back, so that the folded garment, as far as I go with it, is face up, showing the front of the neckline.
Not sure if anyone will be able to visualise my description, and I have no idea why I feel such antipathy to folding clothes "back to front"
Roseofsharon, that is how I fold, and I thought I had learnt it from MK. Now I am doubting, but what does it matter, if the end result is satisfactory.
Me too @ThunderBunk, I've never been the tidiest person in the world, but along with it being a very grey and wet (for Christchurch) winter it's really depressing me at the moment.
Grey days are miserable @Huia! I'm relieved to see a bit of sun after yesterday. Given that the days have been so miserable, I'm thinking I might start on going through some drawers. Just a small job, but they get messy and maybe I need to rethink how I've layered the stuff within them. I am not sure whether we are going to the Swedish shop this morning, but I'll have another look for some containers to help me out.
I have a screened-in side porch. It holds my washer, dryer, cleaning supplies, and art supplies in boxes. When we moved in three years ago, I just put all the leftover furniture and stuff I had no place for in the house on it. I want to use it for outdoor dining and a table to do my art on instead of bringing the supplies back and forth into the house. It overlooks my back patio. So, I plan to get rid of the end tables and bookcases and find some other way to store my art stuff. Once I get rid of things, I will better understand how to use the space. It will be a bit of a project. One bite at a time, as they say. My goal is Thanksgiving dinner.
Comments
It works well for us and we both take our ‘jobs’ very seriously!
Mr Boogs being extremely foody and me having my Mum’s determination to be clean and tidy. I have to be - as my ADHD works against this instinct all the time. 🙂
We have quite a minimalist house so it is easy to keep tidy. Lots of books though. Anyone who thinks books make a house look untidy is wrong!
We found our system wasn't really working as I was home more than husband and he often comes home one or two hours late from work, which makes him tired at weekends. We had to modify our thinking and find a different system
Yes, I like coming down to a clear sink. I’ve made it part of my routine now and, like cleaning my teeth, I can’t not do it.
There is clutter to clear though - having had some temporary accommodation while working away, I have accumulation from two places to manage. Everything looks orderly for now, as long as I don’t open the Cupboards of Doom.
I am particularly ashamed of how many clothes I am sure I will not wear anymore - although at least those are easy to dispose of. But what to do with things like non-functional lamps (and other dead electricals) and a plague of tupperware and other vessels? That is not exactly clear.
I used to make a virtue out of the washing-up; not any more. 4 months of doing without in late 2023 taught me otherwise! New machine installed just before Xmas which made life bearable….
Our bin wo/men are happy to take them. We have to leave them in an open bag next to the recycling.
The local tip also has a place for them.
One of my "red lines" when I was flat-hunting was a dishwasher or space to put one. I probably use it every 2-3 days.
I am just back from a week away with Nenlet1 and her little family. She is super-organised and has a very tidy house, particularly the cupboards and drawers. She was telling me she folds clothes Marie Condo style (and gave me a lesson in that) so that you can always see everything in a drawer or on a shelf, and the key to things on shelves is large baskets so that, again, you can pull them out and see everything. I'm planning to purchase some when I'm out today and make a start!
I've informed Mr Nen that this change to our lives is coming
While my house is not, and has never been, as tidy as I would like it to be, everything is relative. I have been to people's houses that are so immaculate I'm scared to move and I truly wouldn't like my home to be like that.
I am not starting any more sorting and clearing for a couple of weeks.
With two dogs and two busy retired people there’s no danger of that here!
Fortunately we are both chronically untidy .... but clean ... ish. Mrs RR insists we change the bedding at least monthly whether it needs it or not. In order to do this the cats have to be prised off.
I just like to wash dishes by hand (i) as a mindful break (so a bit similar to you, @RockyRoger ), looking from the kitchen window over the garden and the birds, and (ii) because when I’ve had really low mood, washing up a mug or something like that seems to be one of the small tasks I can do to get out of torpor.
Also, there is just me, so no one to argue with about the dishes
I have made a start on the Cupboards of Doom! I picked the easiest starting point - the bathroom. About a shopping bag full of redundant / expired bottles of this and that! I can’t remember why I must have thought, ages ago, that I needed hair conditioner - I have a crop!
I purchased some baskets today, so Marie Condo folding and new methods of storage will commence tomorrow. Watch this space for updates
When my parents bought a new dishwasher and our son was a baby they passed their old one onto us. It was a lifesaver, particularly when I returned to work. However, it really came into it's own when son was ill, it helped us to keep up with keeping stuff clean. The gifted one broke not long eventually and I used my government benefit to buy a new one. I came home after one hospital stay to 10 days of washing and washing up as husband was doing the other child stuff, working and visiting us in hospital. Without a dishwasher we would never have kept the show on the road.
Or, even better, two king sized beds in separate bedrooms.
Having said that, the NE Man has a king sized bed whereas I have a single. But my single means I can have a lot of bookshelves whereas he has only one book case in his bedroom.
A few years ago, the queen broke down. Turms out we bought another queen because all our bed clothes fit a queen. The second biggest mistake in our married life.
Oh, well.
Heh! When Mrs C and I moved to the US, I was bemused that our rental apartment had a tiny kitchen with about two postage stamps' worth of counter space, but had a dishwasher. I couldn't see how you could use enough dishes in that tiny kitchen to make it worth running the dishwasher. And so for basically the whole of the year that we lived in that apartment, I ignored the dishwasher and did the washing up by hand.
These days, we run our dishwasher between 2 and 3 times per day.
The only places in recent years I have encountered a single bed is either at summer conferences where they use college student accommodation (😱) or at retreat centres. Not sure whether the latter arrangements are intended to avoid scandalous liaisons among retreatants, although you would think that unlikely anyway…
I can cope with single beds, but single duvets seem to fall off during the night (I think I am a very mobile sleeper)
Indeed - and his Queen might not approve.
(I’ll get my coat.)
We are currently in a hotel. It's a lovely room, with two 5ft wide beds, but with limited wardrobe space. The NE Man has claimed the bulk of the space on the basis that I need less because my packing is neater. (I have my underwear, PJs, and t-shirts in three separate packing cubes.)
I am not convinced that tidy, organised packing means that I get less than half of the available storage space! But I am highly impressed with the NE Man's ability to raise untidy packing to political ideology - from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. He being the low ability, high need side of the suitcase packing equation.
I'll fetch my own coat.
I'm currently staying on holiday with a friend, and the bed I've been allocated is a single; I confess I'm feeling a tad insecure ...
We have different views on duvet thickness; Mr Nen is one who will change the duvet several times a year depending on the temperature and nowadays he feels the cold more than I do. I, being of A Certain Age, tend to be hot in bed (and not in a good way
Ah, packing cubes! Something else I've come across and that Nenlet1 was extolling the virtues of when we were away with her and her little family last week. You simply take them out of your case and transfer them to the shelves or drawers in your accommodation, have an empty one for dirty laundry, and transfer them all back into the case for going home. Mr Nen is Packer In Charge in our house. I remember how put out I was the first time we went away together with our stuff in one case: I put my things in and he promptly took them all out again
On that subject, I had a happy afternoon of folding yesterday and discovered how much space can be created when it's done the Marie Condo way. I now have all the things on my shelf of the wardrobe (there are six shelves; the other five belong to Mr Nen) folded into two baskets, I've reorganised one of my dressing table drawers and sorted Mr Nen's t-shirt drawer, which now has space in it for more. He hasn't noticed yet so I presume he hasn't put a clean t-shirt on today
What Marie Condo does which, for some reason, goes right against the grain with me is start with the garment face up and folding the outer thirds over the front.
I have to start with the front down on the table and fold into thirds along the back, so that the folded garment, as far as I go with it, is face up, showing the front of the neckline.
Not sure if anyone will be able to visualise my description, and I have no idea why I feel such antipathy to folding clothes "back to front"
.